Abstract:Global patterns of ethnolinguistic diversity vary tremendously. Some regions show very little variation even across vast expanses, whereas others exhibit dense mosaics of different languages spoken alongside one another. Compared with the rest of Native North America, prehistoric California exemplified the latter. Decades of linguistic, genetic, and archaeological research have produced detailed accounts of the migrations that aggregated to build California’s diverse ethnolinguistic mosaic, but there have been… Show more
“…The influx of migrants to California during the Gold Rush (1848-1855 CE) (18) accelerated Native American depopulation from disease, dislocation, mistreatment, and even state-sanctioned violence (30), and, by 1855, only 15% of the Native American population present in 1769 remained (16). Approximately 10% of the Native Americans in California belonged to ethnographic groups that included territories within Sierra Nevada lower montane forest (31). Native Americans who used lower montane forest habitat used fire extensively to enhance productivity of wild tree crops, shrubs, grasses, tubers, roots, and game, and to reduce fuels.…”
Large wildfires in California cause significant socioecological impacts, and half of the federal funds for fire suppression are spent each year in California. Future fire activity is projected to increase with climate change, but predictions are uncertain because humans can modulate or even override climatic effects on fire activity. Here we test the hypothesis that changes in socioecological systems from the Native American to the current period drove shifts in fire activity and modulated fire-climate relationships in the Sierra Nevada. We developed a 415-y record (1600-2015 CE) of fire activity by merging a treering-based record of Sierra Nevada fire history with a 20th-century record based on annual area burned. Large shifts in the fire record corresponded with socioecological change, and not climate change, and socioecological conditions amplified and buffered fire response to climate. Fire activity was highest and fire-climate relationships were strongest after Native American depopulation-following mission establishment (ca. 1775 CE)-reduced the self-limiting effect of Native American burns on fire spread. With the Gold Rush and EuroAmerican settlement (ca. 1865 CE), fire activity declined, and the strong multidecadal relationship between temperature and fire decayed and then disappeared after implementation of fire suppression (ca. 1904 CE). The amplification and buffering of fire-climate relationships by humans underscores the need for parameterizing thresholds of human-vs. climate-driven fire activity to improve the skill and value of fire-climate models for addressing the increasing fire risk in California.anthropogenic landscapes | fire ecology | land use | regime shifts | climate variability A n increase in the extent of forest fires in the American West since the mid-1980s (1) has enhanced risks to lives, property, water quality, biodiversity, carbon sequestration, and other ecosystem services (2). This increasing wildfire trend has become even steeper during the past decade, with a higher number of large wildfires (>100 km 2 ) each year in each Western state compared with the annual average from 1980 to 2000 (3). The fire problem is particularly acute in California, where a history of fire suppression (4), climate change (1, 5), more extreme fire weather (6), expanding development (7), and massive wildfires (e.g., 2013 Rim Fire, 1,042 km 2 ) have caused significant socioecological impacts. Future area burned in California is projected to further increase with anthropogenic warming (8). With more than half of the annual federal firefighting budget already being spent suppressing fires in California (4), a sustainable system of fire management requires approaches beyond active fire suppression (9). Predicting future fire activity is challenging because humans can alter fire regimes and fire-climate relationships even if climate becomes more conducive to fire (10). Changes in socioecological systems (SESs) can modulate or even override climatic effects on fire regimes through changing land use, igniti...
“…The influx of migrants to California during the Gold Rush (1848-1855 CE) (18) accelerated Native American depopulation from disease, dislocation, mistreatment, and even state-sanctioned violence (30), and, by 1855, only 15% of the Native American population present in 1769 remained (16). Approximately 10% of the Native Americans in California belonged to ethnographic groups that included territories within Sierra Nevada lower montane forest (31). Native Americans who used lower montane forest habitat used fire extensively to enhance productivity of wild tree crops, shrubs, grasses, tubers, roots, and game, and to reduce fuels.…”
Large wildfires in California cause significant socioecological impacts, and half of the federal funds for fire suppression are spent each year in California. Future fire activity is projected to increase with climate change, but predictions are uncertain because humans can modulate or even override climatic effects on fire activity. Here we test the hypothesis that changes in socioecological systems from the Native American to the current period drove shifts in fire activity and modulated fire-climate relationships in the Sierra Nevada. We developed a 415-y record (1600-2015 CE) of fire activity by merging a treering-based record of Sierra Nevada fire history with a 20th-century record based on annual area burned. Large shifts in the fire record corresponded with socioecological change, and not climate change, and socioecological conditions amplified and buffered fire response to climate. Fire activity was highest and fire-climate relationships were strongest after Native American depopulation-following mission establishment (ca. 1775 CE)-reduced the self-limiting effect of Native American burns on fire spread. With the Gold Rush and EuroAmerican settlement (ca. 1865 CE), fire activity declined, and the strong multidecadal relationship between temperature and fire decayed and then disappeared after implementation of fire suppression (ca. 1904 CE). The amplification and buffering of fire-climate relationships by humans underscores the need for parameterizing thresholds of human-vs. climate-driven fire activity to improve the skill and value of fire-climate models for addressing the increasing fire risk in California.anthropogenic landscapes | fire ecology | land use | regime shifts | climate variability A n increase in the extent of forest fires in the American West since the mid-1980s (1) has enhanced risks to lives, property, water quality, biodiversity, carbon sequestration, and other ecosystem services (2). This increasing wildfire trend has become even steeper during the past decade, with a higher number of large wildfires (>100 km 2 ) each year in each Western state compared with the annual average from 1980 to 2000 (3). The fire problem is particularly acute in California, where a history of fire suppression (4), climate change (1, 5), more extreme fire weather (6), expanding development (7), and massive wildfires (e.g., 2013 Rim Fire, 1,042 km 2 ) have caused significant socioecological impacts. Future area burned in California is projected to further increase with anthropogenic warming (8). With more than half of the annual federal firefighting budget already being spent suppressing fires in California (4), a sustainable system of fire management requires approaches beyond active fire suppression (9). Predicting future fire activity is challenging because humans can alter fire regimes and fire-climate relationships even if climate becomes more conducive to fire (10). Changes in socioecological systems (SESs) can modulate or even override climatic effects on fire regimes through changing land use, igniti...
“…Developed first to describe the dispersive behavior and distribution of birds (Fretwell and Lucas, 1969), the IFD has recently proved useful for explaining anthropological problems as well (Codding and Jones, 2013;Jazwa et al, 2013;Kennett et al, 2006;O'Connell and Codding, 2014;Winterhalder et al, 2010). The model posits that dispersive organisms will choose to locate first in the most suitable habitat available.…”
Section: Introductionmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Our first challenge is deciding which factors are most important for ranking habitat suitability. Other studies have used watershed size and resource base (Winterhalder et al, 2010), effective moisture (O'Connell and Codding, 2014), and environmental bioproductivity (Codding and Jones, 2013) as proxy measures for suitability. Here, we assess suitability by using large animal population densities.…”
a b s t r a c tThis study provides an ecological explanation for the distribution of Arctic Small Tool tradition (ASTt) settlements in Alaska and the origin of their arctic maritime adaptation. Theoretically grounded in the ideal free distribution (IFD) model, which predicts that higher ranked habitats will be occupied first and most continuously, we contend that the location of large mammals was a major factor influencing human dispersal and settlement decisions in the arctic and subarctic ecosystems of Alaska. We rank habitat suitability based on historic mammal population densities from wildlife ecology reports across predefined ecological zones in Alaska; we multiply densities by average animal weights per species to determine suitability rankings. Coastal habitats in Alaska are higher ranked than adjacent tundra habitats, but the interior boreal forest may have been the highest ranked, considering technological constraints of hunting aquatic species. The ASTt migration into Alaska created population pressure that promoted the colonization of the unoccupied Arctic coast and development of the dual, terrestrial-maritime economy. When pan-Alaska human populations declined around 3200-2500 years ago low ranked tundra ecoregions were abandoned. As human populations recovered Alaska coasts became the most densely populated habitats. The adaptive logic entailed in the IFD provides a consistent evolutionary interpretation for settlement patterns documented in this region.Published by Elsevier Inc.
“…The location of larger sites with permanent or semipermanent occupation usually takes into account a suite of environmental and socioeconomic factors. The ideal free distribution or IFD (Åström 1994;Fretwell and Lucas 1969;Fretwell 1972;Sutherland 1983Sutherland , 1996Treganza 1995) is used in behavioral ecology and increasingly in anthropology and archaeology to understand how such factors affect human settlement and broader patterns of decision-making and culture change (e.g., Kennett 2005;Kennett et al 2006Kennett et al , 2009Kennett and Winterhalder 2008;McClure et al 2009;Winterhalder et al 2010;Culleton 2012;O'Connell and Allen 2012;Codding and Jones 2013;Giovas and Fitzpatrick 2014;Moritz et al 2014;Codding and Bird 2015).…”
Section: Introductionmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…It can be used to understand settlement patterns on both large (e.g., Fitzhugh and Kennett 2010;Allen and O'Connell 2008) and small (e.g., Kennett et al 2006;Culleton 2012) scales. It is flexible enough to address questions about where people settled as they entered and expanded throughout California (Codding and Jones 2013) and which drainage on a small island people would choose to establish individual sites (Winterhalder et al 2010).…”
Using targeted survey, excavation, and radiocarbon dating, we assess the extent to which human settlement patterns on California's northern Channel Islands fit predictions arising from the ideal free distribution (IFD): (1) people first established and expanded permanent settlements in the regions ranked high for environmental resource suitability; (2) as population grew, they settled in progressively lower ranked habitats; and (3) changes in the archaeological record associated with high population levels such as increases in faunal diversity and evenness in high-ranked habitats are coincident with the expansion to other areas. On Santa Rosa Island, the early permanent settlements were located in both high-and middle-ranked locations, with the most extensive settlement at the highest ranked locations and only isolated sites elsewhere. Settlement at a low-ranked habitat was confined to the late Holocene (after 3600 cal BP). Drought influenced the relative rank of different locations, which is an example of climate adding a temporal dimension to the model that episodically stimulated population movement and habitat abandonment. Because the IFD includes a wide range of cultural and environmental variables, it has the potential to be a central model for guiding archaeological analysis and targeted field research.
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